Category Archives: Outsourcing

You’re Understaffed. And You’re Not Alone. Now What? Part II (Updated)

In Part I we noted that, five years ago, Source One Management Services ran a survey that they summarized in a 4-part series on how Companies Face Limited Procurement Resources that demonstrated the dark state of affairs in Procurement at the time. They found that 1 of 3 Procurement departments were understaffed, and this was not a good thing as costs were climbing, GDP growth was flattening, and availability of supply in certain key raw materials and rare earth metals was diminishing and it took a talented Supply Management team to navigate these chaotic waters. We also noted that, since then, the situation hasn’t improved. Today, 51% of Procurement Leaders believe they do not have the capability in their terms to deliver their procurement strategy. But despite this, 72% of Procurement Leaders are spending less than 2% of their budgets on training. And the need for professionals is six times their availability.

We also noted that, in order to cope with the situation, there were three things you had to advance in an understaffed, undertrained, and overworked organization.

  • Analytics, and not just technologically,
  • Category Sourcing, and
  • Value Source identification.

But that might not be enough on its own. So what else can your Procurement department do?

At a high level, your department can either do something or it can do nothing. Assuming your department chooses to do something, it can do it internally, or it can do it externally. If it does it internally, it can add staff or augment staff. If it does it externally, it can augment staff or outsource. If it outsources, it can outsource projects or outsource categories / commodities to a GPO. In other words, the options are:

  • Do nothing.
  • Hire more staff.
  • Augment headcount with temporary staff.
  • Augment headcount with service/solution provider personnel.
  • Outsource project(s).
  • Outsource categories/commodities to a GPO.

Even though you might think your superiors want you to do nothing, as they give you nothing to work with, and won’t hire more staff, that’s not the answer. You’ll just get more budget and staff cuts. And even if you can eventually get approval for temporary staff augmentation, that might not be the answer in the short term. It takes time to ramp a new hire up to speed, and that which is given may be taketh away even quicker if you don’t get results within the unrealistic time frames set before you.

This says that, in the short term, your best option is typically to:

  • Augment headcount with temporary staff.
  • Augment headcount with service/solution provider personnel.
  • Outsource project(s).
  • Outsource categories/commodities to a GPO.

But the right answer is not always clear. For example, while you might be able to save an average of 10% off of your office suppliers by switching to a GPO, if you are including high cost / high volume items like printers, external storage tapes and drives, and office chairs in your office supplies, you might do better sourcing those separately. If this means that the remaining spend is not enough for the GPO, that might still be okay if you can save enough on the big spending items and just negotiate an x% off catalog pricing on the rest.

And when do you augment staff on your own versus flipping a project to a service provider’s staff? If it’s just muscle you need to get your spending in order and to run one-off analyses to find new options and to make sure spend is put through the system (to get maverick spend under control), then your best option might be to augment internally. But if you need someone to source medium- or high-dollar complex / strategic categories, you probably need some category expertise. Chances are that expertise will be hard to find, expensive, and only needed once every couple of years. Unless the candidate comes with some other useful skills, then you might want to temporarily augment your staff with expert service provider staff.

Tough questions, let’s see what we can make of them in Part III.

You’re Understaffed. And You’re Not Alone. Now What? Part I (Updated)

This series originally posted in June of 2014. Since nothing has changed, it’s being updated and reposted as it is still ever so timely.

Five years ago, Source One Management Services ran a survey that they summarized in a 4-part series on how Companies Face Limited Procurement Resources that demonstrated the dark state of affairs in Procurement at the time. They found that 1 of 3 Procurement departments were understaffed, and this was not a good thing as costs were climbing, GDP growth was flattening, and availability of supply in certain key raw materials and rare earth metals was diminishing and it took a talented Supply Management team to navigate these chaotic waters.

Fast forward five years, and not only are many Procurement organizations still understaffed, but 51% of Procurement Leaders believe they do not have the capability in their terms to deliver their procurement strategy. But despite this, 72% of Procurement Leaders are spending less than 2% of their budgets on training. Add this to the fact that a survey by DHL in 2017 found that not only is the supply chain talent pool is not keeping up with the changing requirements as technology reshapes the industry, but that demand for supply chain professionals will soon exceed supply by a ratio of 6:1, if it hasn’t already, and the situation is bleak indeed. In summary, Procurement organizations are, and will be, under-staffed, under-equipped, an with not doing anything about it. Not good.

But often your only option for growth in today’s marketplace with increasing costs, increasing competition, and increasing consumer demands is cost control — only available through Supply Management. So what does this mean for you? What do you need to do to survive?

More Analysis
But real, effective, analysis that identifies new opportunities takes time. More time than just dumping your AP and P-Card databases into a spend analysis tool and running the canned top-n spend reports by supplier, category, department, etc. As per our classic, but still highly relevant, post on Spend Analysis – How Do You Get It Right, real savings comes from real insight which requires real analysis, which takes time, effort, and focus.

More Category Sourcing
If you’re short-staffed, you’re going to focus on the top n suppliers, categories, departments, etc. spit out by the canned reports from your spend analysis reporting tool. Some of these will have opportunities, but since you’ll already know most of these opportunities, you’ll miss many of your biggest opportunities, which are typically found in the high-opportunity tier-2 categories that never get addressed due to lack of resources. And you’ll also miss mid-tier opportunities that could be captured with new automation technologies and tactical procurement approaches, as identified in our recent post on how your tail spend should be vanishingly small and the typical losses associated with it negligible.

Identify New Sources of Value
The future of Supply Management, in an inflationary economy, is value-generation. Cost control is a good start, and in an organization overspending by 5% to 15%, it will make a big impact in the beginning. But once all of the fat is trimmed, the best you can do is reign in costs. This means that the next round of savings is going to come from identifying value-generation opportunities. Bundling and unbundling the right value added services for your organization; helping engineering identify more cost-effective alternate materials and production processes that are also more environmentally friendly, and may let you charge a sustainability premium; and identifying new market opportunities based on products and services your strategic suppliers could provide you with can all bring value to your organization.

What next? Stay tuned for Part II.

Lost Value in Outsourcing

Recently we ran a piece on Hidden Costs in Outsourcing which described many of the costs and overpayments you could be making when outsourcing a function in an effort to reduce costs and increase efficiency, even if the outsourcing contract results in reduced costs and increased efficiency. And while SI believes in win-win agreements, they should be above board with each party only taking its agreed upon share of the pie.

But even if the outsourcer only bills what it agrees to and doesn’t markup rates, charge you for shelfware, pass through unauthorized expenses, or hike the commissions, that doesn’t mean they are delivering all the value they are promised. This happens regularly with “full service” management or technology consulting firms, and the client never knows. But due to his unique position, the doctor knows, and having figured it out, refuses to participate in any project that denies a client organization of the full value they deserve. But this doesn’t prevent it from happening — there’s always someone else who will help the consultancy continue the practice.

What are we talking about?

The simple fact that no single management or technology consultancy, no matter how big, is an expert in every process or system you need, despite what they claim.

And the doctor knows you’re saying, we know this, so we chose the consultancy that makes it a practice to bring in experts when it is weak in an area to get us the information we need when we need it. But do they? Specifically, do they bring in true experts? Do they get the right information? Is it appropriate to your situation?

Some firms do NOT bring in true experts. Why? They have no expertise on staff, and use a model to find experts that is not congruent with what it takes to attract experts. For example, some firms are employing the “network” or “network search” model where they build a “network” of experts they can tap into for help. But this network usually consists of freelancers who self-register and/or who are invited based on automated LinkedIn profile searches. Are these people experts? Some are, but unless they are semi-retired folk looking to keep busy, probably not. Most of the people in these networks are unemployed / self-employed and in need of work. Most experts are too busy to even think about registering on another expert or social network, and will not be there. And experts such as the doctor will not engage with this type of model. The last thing the doctor wants to do is provide an hour of advisory to a Big 6 only to have it turn around, take the information completely out of context, and tell its client to consider vendor X or product Y because the doctor recommended it.

Secondly, some firms do not contract the experts for enough time to get the information they need to truly have an advanced understanding from the market. For example, many of these firms will engage experts for as little as an hour or two and expect to get deep expertise on a market and technology and, at the end of it, understand what vendors to focus on or what technologies to dive into. Then, believing they know where to focus, they will have their interns do research on the specific vendors or technologies and produce deep reports. But interns don’t understand the intricacies that help differentiate similar vendors or similar technologies and can easily fall for marketing hyperbole and overlook deep capability.

Thirdly, as they are not experts, they will not understand the intricacies of your situation, what specifically they should be looking for, and what questions they should be asking the expert, should they actually get one. So whatever they do will be of limited value from the get go.

If a company is engaging a consulting firm for help, the amount situation-specific consulting needed from an expert is significantly more than a few hours. And if all your management consultancy is doing is engaging the expert for as few hours as they think they can get away with, and then assigning a junior consultant to go and do the market research, you’re not getting the value you deserve.

Hidden Costs in Outsourcing

A strategy used by many Sourcing and Procurement organizations to get quick wins is to outsource tactical Procurement operations and/or Category Management to BPOs or expert (niche) consultancies. This can be very successful if the BPO is reasonably efficient in processing compared to the organization or if the expert (niche) consultancy has considerable expertise and can quickly find a lot of savings the organization never could. But that doesn’t mean that you are getting the best value. These organizations are trying to maximize their profit, and if you’re happy with the value you are getting, why should they try to optimize their costs?

Before we continue, let me be specific here — we are NOT attacking the hourly rate for their (top) talent. Good category managers are worth their weight in platinum, and you should expect to pay top dollar for them. But you should also receive top value in exchange, not mid-level value and definitely not mediocre value. But that’s what you could be getting if you are not evaluating these services as closely as you would be evaluating your strategic direct material buys.

And, before we continue, let’s make it clear that while we are focussed on Supply Management, these hidden costs could be found in any outsourcing arrangement — marketing support, legal support, engineering support, etc. So what are the hidden costs?

  • Rate Markup this can take many forms, including A rates for B staff or onshore rates for offshore staff; you could be paying 200/hour for the expert, but a relatively inexperienced mentee could be doing most of the work, or you could be told you are being supported on-shore when really 90% of the work is being offshored to low-cost locales in Eastern Europe
  • Temporary Labour if the provider falls behind, they might hire temporary labour and bill you for it; this is okay if you ask them to, but if they do it without your permission for a fixed-cost task, this is definitely NOT ok
  • Shelfware/Bloatware where you are being billed for software not being used or you are being billed for a suite license when the organization is only using one module
  • Pass-through Expenses some organizations will try to pass through any and all expenses they think they can, even if they require explicit pre-approval or the contract says they are the responsibility of the outsourced company
  • (Hiked) Commissions some organizations will charge-back a percentage of savings, a value fee for a successful value-add negotiation, a percentage of a recovery, etc. this is usually okay as this is usually part of an agreement, but there are usually restrictions — minimum value, maximum percentage, and so on; sometimes an organization will charge commissions beyond what they are allowed to
  • Taxes some organizations will charge taxes based on their locale, taxes you may not be technically required to pay — double check the tax lines carefully

And these common overcharges could be just the tip of the iceberg. So be sure to be as cognizant about sourcing your services relationship as you are about sourcing your strategic products and services.

Provider Damnation 70: Outsourced Providers

Dear outsourced service provider, you didn’t think that Carriers and 3PLs were going to get all the attention did you? You can cause your clients just as many headaches as these providers, if not more. In fact, you can also cause them cold sweats, fever, panic attacks, and even heart attacks if you play your cards right (and very, very, wrong for the client).

Outsourced Serviced Providers, especially those that are experts in what they do, can be a boon to an organization trying to get some quick savings to hit some (overly) aggressive (and stupid) savings targets set by the C-Suite (that doesn’t realize Procurement should be about maximizing value, not maximizing short term savings). This is especially true if the Procurement Service Provider (PSP) outsourced to is a GPO (Group Purchasing Organization) that already has contracts for goods and services in a number of categories required by the organization at rates lower than the organization is paying now, as any categories the organization can switch over result in instant savings. It’s also true if the provider is an invoice and payment processing provider that is fully automated and can accomplish the same task as the organization at half of the price (because 2 workers can do the work of 10 and the platform subscription is only the annual cost of 3 worker’s salaries) and free up valuable resources in the organization to focus on strategic value identification activities and not tactical processing.

But these benefits come at a cost.

Handing over a category means losing control on that category.

GPOs are going to select providers that please the majority of their customers, where majority really means the financial majority. So, if the GPO has a few heavyweight Global 3000 clients that account for a significant amount of its annual revenue, guess which clients get the greatest say and the contracts they want? (Hint: Not you!)

Handing over a contract means limited control over a slew of categories.

A GPO is only going to take a contract if it can make money. Since it typically charges a small fee per transaction, it knows it needs a lot of transactions to make money. As a result, it is going to demand a set of categories that mean a minimum annual spend, and the organization is going to lose a lot of control on those categories for the length of the contract.

Handing over processing hands over control … and control over realized savings.

You are dependent on the provider to do an m-way match and detect over billings, duplicate billings, and failure to account for return credits and volume-based discounts and rebates. If they just get the invoice and pay it blindly, and the invoice for a multi-million category is still at last years prices, you could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Handing over processing hands over knowledge.

Knowledge of tactical procurement processing operations, best practices, and the best and worst suppliers from a Procurement perspective is now in the hands of the provider. As tactical processors are displaced and leave, and more and more focus is put on other Supply Management activities, the organization becomes more and more dependent on the provider for even simple tasks. This makes it incredibly hard to pull the function back in house if it ever wants to, or to even switch to another provider in the future. It’s like giving the supplier Power of Attorney. Not a good thing.

Handing over sourcing is giving them the keys to the castle.

Losing control over tactical processing is bad enough, but losing control over sourcing of a set of indirect categories makes you ultimately dependent on the provider. As the great Angus and Malcolm Young said twenty-five years ago, the service provider, she got you by the …